Neurotic Ramblings

Archive for July 28th, 2009

The smell hit her as soon as she entered the room; stale cigarettes and cheap beer were staples in his life as of late.  He sat on the couch going through his phone, not exactly sure what he was looking for.

The latest one had left him and there they were again, ten years later, in the same situation.  They spoke not a word.  They didn’t have to.  Over the years of arguing and screaming and using words as their poison of choice they had learned that peace and love was kept best in silence.

He noticed her shortly after she had walked in.  Her presence had always commanded attention in the most subtle of ways.  His gaze fixed on her and for all the relief and gratefulness he felt, he couldn’t even bring himself to smile, but his eyes said it all.  They always had.

They walked down the hallway towards her car.  She had made him clean himself up a bit before walking out the door.  That was one of the things she missed the most about him.  His arrogance and pride had always kept looking him clean. 

He was broken now.  He was broken and she couldn’t fix him. Not this time.  No, this time it was different.  He had given himself in.  Given up the others who gave him what he wanted, the ones who took care of him and supported his lifestyle.  The ones who could pick him up from this mess financially.  Now they were gone and so was the one he ran them all off for.

The one he never gave up sat next to him now, comforting him like only she knew how.  They had put each other through hell.  They had been through it all and to this day remained the only constant in each other’s lives. 

He was there through her bad decisions and she was there through his self-destruction phases.  As sick as it was, they had once both found delight in the other’s pain.  But as the years passed by and they grew further away from the destructive and painful past they once shared, they had come to learn to appreciate and value one another.

It was always understood from the moment their paths crossed again that nothing could ever come from that fateful meeting other than a twisted quid pro quo friendship.  Sure, the sexual tension was always there.  But they knew entirely too much about one another and that knowledge crushed whatever desires attempted to build up inside them.  This was nothing more than two people who had bared their souls and put their pride on the line in an effort to have what everyone longs for.  A soul mate. 

You see, to them a soul mate wasn’t in the form of a relationship linked partner.  No, a soul mate was one who knew them inside and out, the good and the bad, the pure and the evil.  One who knew how to heal wounds with a look and an embrace without judgment spoken, although it was constantly there.  They were soul mates, walking the earth in search of something they knew didn’t exist, but incessantly looking for it either way.

It was this mutual understanding that allowed them to remain functional human beings…